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Self-Replicating Robots
Posted by
samzenpus
on Wed May 11, '05 07:37 PM
from the beginning-of-the-end dept.
from the beginning-of-the-end dept.
ABC News is running a story that self-replicating robots are no longer the stuff of science fiction. Scientists at Cornell University have created small robots that can build copies of themselves. Here is a movie demonstrating the self-replication process. And the paper that will be published in Thursdays issue of Nature.
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Self-Replicating Robots
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Re:More!
(Score:5, Interesting)(http://www.cursor.org/)
For a more real-world example, look at malformed prions involved in BSE (mad cow disease). In a way, they self replicate - a single malformed prion can end up leaving your brain full of them. On the other hand, their input is simply a normal prion - they just fold it into their misformed shape. Is that really replication? Yes, but it's a pretty simple form of replication with very limited inputs.
A real feat would be robots that could self replicate with their only material inputs being, say, raw minerals and energy. That would be closer to what bacteria do.
Re:More!
(Score:5, Informative)See Barry McMullin's paper [eeng.dcu.ie] or Tim Taylor's thesis [ed.ac.uk].
The simple way to do that is to have a "plan" (the genome) that can be read by a "constructor" (the rest of the machine) which follows the plan for building a copy of itself, including the plan. Modifications in the plan lead to modifications in the result. That sounds obvious to us, but Von Neumann wrote about those things more than a decade before the structure of DNA was elucidated.
It also means that the constructor must be, or contain, a Turing machine - a universal computer, making it able to construct anything that can be mechanically constructed out of a program. In living beings, the Turing machine is the result of the complex interactions between proteins that regulate each other's transcriptions and activity. Again, this is obvious to us, but only because Monod and Jacob discovered it in the 70s.
That's why Von Neumann had to invent a very complex structure in a very complex cellular automaton to obtain a really "self-replicating" system (in the interesting sense). That's also why Chris Langton's self-replicating loops are not really "interestingly" self-replicating. And that's why the structures in TFA are even less interestingly self-replicating. Hell, they have to rely on ready-made modules ! They are not even on the same level as simple self-replicating patterns in the Game of Life, wince in the Game of Life new "modules" are constantly created.
The defining factor of life is not self-replication on the global scale. It is the fact that this self-replication occurs by constant self-building. Living systems can build themselves, not out of ready-made modules (babies aren't built by patching together bits of arms, legs, brains, etc) but by breaking down external materials, extracting energy from their environment, then using it to build themselves, in apparent complete contempt the 2nd law of thermodynamics (the key word here is apparent - every single reaction in living beings is completely compatible with the laws of physics, otherwise it wouldn't take place - duh!). Even though the resulting compounds are thermodynamically very unfavorable, they persist because they are constantly replenished by the set of chemical reactions known as "life", which can essentially be defined as autocatalysis resulting in structures with a capacity for evolution.
Hod Lipson is a really great researcher. His work on developmental systems for evolutionary design of structure is so cool it hurts. But I think he and his guys might want to tone down the comparisons with biological self-replication. Right now the structures they have are not even on the same level as the simple patterns that you can see in the Game of Life !
It's ALIVE!!!!
(Score:3, Funny)(Last Journal: Wednesday September 20, @04:40PM)
So?
(Score:5, Funny)(the trick is to get them to *stop* duplicating...)
hmm..
(Score:5, Funny)(http://slashdot.org/ | Last Journal: Thursday August 29, @03:04PM)
Re:hmm..
(Score:5, Funny)(http://hive.ro/)
Would this be considered robot porn?
no silly, this [punkasspunk.com] is robot pr0n.Re:hmm..
(Score:4, Funny)(Last Journal: Saturday July 15, @12:41PM)
Not replication
(Score:3, Interesting)Re:Not replication
(Score:5, Insightful)(http://lovedave.net/)
Re:Not replication
(Score:5, Interesting)That's not self replication
(Score:5, Insightful)Lame.
Re:That's not self replication
(Score:5, Insightful)(http://edgeofvision.com/ | Last Journal: Saturday July 30, @06:27PM)
Indeed. Last I checked, humans and other animals couldn't self-replicate either, but needed to have raw materials preprocessed by things like plants first.
Re:That's not self replication
(Score:4, Insightful)(http://www.andrebasso.com/)
Re:That's not self replication
(Score:5, Funny)(Last Journal: Friday September 01, @03:39AM)
Not to mention that they don't have wireless and carry less space than a Nomad.
Re:That's not self replication
(Score:4, Funny)(http://www.hollan.org/ | Last Journal: Wednesday December 25, @01:14PM)
I am James T. Kirk.
You have erred.
Perform your primary function!
For my next trick, I will ask the computer to compute the last decimal place of Pi.
Old Glory Insurance
(Score:5, Funny)SNL Skit, funny as shit!
I can't wait!!!
(Score:4, Funny)Re:I can't wait!!!
(Score:4, Funny)I am not Sarah Connor
(Score:5, Funny)(http://www.thornton2.com/ | Last Journal: Tuesday May 10, @04:25PM)
Not exactly "gray goo"
(Score:4, Insightful)(http://www.kuro5hin.org/prime-intellect/index.html)
Video is really slow
(Score:5, Funny)/.'ed; Coral link to Movie
(Score:5, Informative)(Last Journal: Thursday August 24, @11:36AM)
New Public Service Announcement
(Score:3, Funny)These robots are missing out
(Score:3, Funny)(Last Journal: Tuesday September 12, @04:31PM)
The Evolution of Leggo?
(Score:4, Informative)(http://simplyted.blogspot.com/)
In March 2005, we discovered engineers at the University of Bath working on a machine that can rapid prototype and replicate itself [bath.ac.uk].
Researchers Hod Lipson and Jordan B. Pollack at Brandeis University have coupled inkjet technology and software to autonomously design and fabricate robots [brandeis.edu] without human intervention.
Neil Gershenfeld, director of MIT Center for Bits and Atoms, who runs a one-semester smash-hit class called "How to Make Almost Anything", is determined to produce affordable, replicating personal fabricators by 2025 [blogspot.com].
And today Hod Lipson has announced the arrival of simple self replicating robots with enormous potential.
Applications
More complex shapes are possible in principle, such as adding grippers, cameras, new sensors etc. to modules. A robot could assemble itself into a new structure to deal with novel events. Also points a way to self-repairing robots.
Nanomachines: Lipson is interested in making these machines at microscale. That could drive major advances in Nanotechnology because huge numbers of robots are needed to manufacture things at a molecular scale. Self-replication is how biology does it.
Implications
Could change the way almost everything is manufactured. Machines that clone themselves are a key factor in the near horizon revolution of digital fabrication [blogspot.com].
The movie (accelerated 4X) is eerie to watch. It's easy to imagine a clutter of cubes picking themselves up and walking towards you.
Edward F. Moore's 1959 self-reproducers
(Score:5, Interesting)(http://www.dpbsmith.com/)
Basically he had a two-dimension row of pieces, rather like jigsaw puzzle pieces, held upright between two pieces of plexiglass. The pieces had just the right shape; they were basically diamonds with a truncated bottom (so they sat in one particular orientation) and sides. Initially they'd all be sitting flat. He would "add heat" by shaking the contraption laterally. Nothing would happen, because the blunt ends would hit against each other.
Then he'd take two of them and tilt them and slide them together, producing a single two-celled "organism." There were little hook-like projections that held them together.
He would shake the thing again. This time, because the two "cells" were tilted, their ends would scoop up underneath the blunt ends of the neighboring "cells," tilting them up into the proper position to hook together too.
So, when he shook the thing in its initial state, nothing would happen. But when locked two of them together into a "creature" and shook them, they caused the other "cells" to assemble into two-celled organisms just like the original one.
In other words, the organism had created copies of itself.
It really worked; there was no deception; after the lecture practically everyone swarmed around and played with the thing and it didn't require any sleight-of-hand twists of the wrist.
I thought it was a strained tour-de-force then, and I think these "self-replicating robots" are just a fancier example of the same thing.
Dyson
(Score:3, Interesting)Imagine sending a quarter-pound payload of a well-programed robot of such construction to something like one of Jupiter's icy moons. It is as small as needed to do the following tasks: replicating twice, grab a small piece of the ice on the moon as cargo, and then launching itself with some element in the ice as fuel towards mars. That's all it is programmed to do.
In x amount of time you have a mars with oceans. Astroid mining could also work on similar principles.
Regardless of how plausible or crazy the above ideas are, the concept is gorgeous for people... The investment in one such machine can yield payoffs of millions/billions of man-hours of labor, in places man can exist etc.
There is always the observation of slavery/exploitation if such a machine can replicate. Or even fears of Matrix/virus-like behavior which continues uncontrollably. But it is an interesting idea to think about. Rarely can a human investment of time provide such a staggering turnaround in product.
Interesting concept, even if it does still resemble science-fiction.
Self replication vs grey goo
(Score:5, Informative)(http://www.illuminatingscience.org/)
But it does mean that self-replicating robots are, unsurprisingly, possible, and that if the robots could be made simpler, they could perhaps replicate using simpler pieces, and so forth.
More importantly, if you gave the robots a whole bunch of pieces (basically, the equivalent of Lego blocks) they could perhaps replicate and reproduce into shapes that best suit their environment - they're modular and expandable, which might have important applications (e.g., rescue, exploration, etc).
Holy Heebie-Jeebies, Batman!
(Score:3)I can just see them in nano-scale, coursing through my blood and rewiring my brain.
Human-Form Replicators
(Score:5, Funny)(Last Journal: Monday January 30, @05:35PM)
I have a better design
(Score:3, Insightful)(Last Journal: Monday January 06, @11:36PM)
I'm sure I've seen more bogus papers than usual go by recently.
More info on research
(Score:3, Informative)(http://edgeofvision.com/ | Last Journal: Saturday July 30, @06:27PM)
Page on their self-replication research [cornell.edu] (coral cache [nyud.net])
Their cubes seem pretty cool... basically a physical variant of cellular automata. The Nature paper is neat but necessarily short. Here's an older paper with some more details:
Designed and Evolved Blueprints For Physical Self-Replicating Machines [nyud.net]
Efstathios Mytilinaios, David Marcus, Mark Desnoyer and Hod Lipson, (2004)
Abstract: Self-replication is a process critical to natural and artificial life, but has been investigated to date mostly in simulation and in abstract systems. The near absence of physical demonstrations of self-replication is due primarily to the lack of a physical substrate in which self-replication can be implemented. This paper proposes a substrate composed of simple modular units, in which both simple and complex machines can construct and be constructed by other machines in the same substrate. A number of designs, both hand crafted and evolved, are proposed.
It's amazing the way these robots are able...
(Score:5, Funny)(Last Journal: Monday January 06, @11:36PM)
Much easier to implement
(Score:3, Funny)(http://whitehouse.com/)
FOOLS!
(Score:3, Funny)(Last Journal: Wednesday April 05, @11:30AM)
MUHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH
I hope that webserver can replicate itself
(Score:3, Funny)I foresee my karma going down the shitter.
-d